Former Valley of Tears champion Keegan Swenson returns to Texas this week as commentator for Dirt Crit broadcast as he remains sidelined from racing - Gravel Bits

2024 Valley of Tears gravel race champion Keegan Swenson makes a return to Turkey, Texas this weekend, but will line up alongside veteran announcer Brad Sohner in the broadcast booth rather than pin on a number to race.

The reigning UCI marathon cross-country mountain bike World Champion suffered a fractured pelvis leading to Santa Vall in Spain, when a driver suddenly opened their door, causing him to crash during his training ride. He finished well off the podium in gravel debut for 2026 and then withdrew from Cape Epic.

"Unfortunately, not quite ready to race yet," Swenson announced on Instagram from Texas, after time off the bike at his winter home in Arizona. "We are good enough to go hang out doing a shakeout ride with the Valley of Tears crew at 3 p.m. [Friday]. So if you're there, come join for a nice little shakeout right before the race on Saturday."

He said he looked forward to commentating the Dirt Crit Friday night with Sohner, shown on the Valley of Tears YouTube channel and Instagram feed, and "maybe handing out some primes". The pro women hit the dirt for 20 minutes plus two laps at 5:30 p.m. CST, with the pro men competing in the same format at 6:05 p.m. CST.

Only the two pro criteriums on Friday will be broadcast, the main event on Saturday not having a live stream, just periodic updates posted to social media.

There is a $45,000 prize purse paid evenly across the elite men's and women's top 10s. A stacked field for the main 93-mile gravel race includes defending champions Daxton Mock (Trek Driftless) and Sofia Gomez Villafane (Specialized Off-road), as well as two-time podium finisher Emily Newsom (Ventum-BikeTiresDirect), 2024 runner-up Chase Wark (Lunchbox Racing), and an influx of international riders such as Simen Nordahl Svendsen (PAS Racing), Simon Pellaud (Cervelo-Assos-Maxxis) and Minke Bakker (Ça C’est Gravel).

Canadian MTB World Cup rider Owen Clark surprises with men's victory at Homegrown Gravel

Three months removed from spinal fusion surgery, 22-year-old Owen Clark (Pivot Cycles-OTE) lined up at Homegrown Gravel in Franklin, Georgia on Saturday and won a six-rider sprint for the elite men's title.

Clark finished the 100-mile mixed-surface race in 4:49:35, edging Will Hardin (Team Winston-Salem) and Ben Kolbie at the line. One second back trailed the trio of Jura Gerlach (Milligan University), Nathan Surowiec and former Unbound Gravel 200 winner Ian Boswell (Wahoo), who rolled in for sixth.

A men's U23 Pan-American mountain bike champion in cross-country, the Canadian told Cyclingnews that the gravel race across Georgia and Alabama dirt roads was the longest race of his career so far. In 2025, he scored several top 10 finishes in U23 XCO races on the World Cup circuit, including fourth at Lake Placid.

"This was a pretty big wild card for me, my first race of the season and actually the longest race I've ever done in my life. I had no idea what to expect," Clark told Cyclingnews in Franklin.

"Like an hour and a half into the race, I was like there's no chance. But I was in the lead group and it settled a little bit once we got into a group of six. I surprised myself with a sprint in the end. So that was cool."

Clark was hit from behind by a driver of an automobile while on a training ride in western North Carolina, where he attends Brevard College. He underwent surgery to fuse five vertebrae in his back in late November.

He took to Instagram after the successful procedure to say: "Lying on the side of the road after impact was the scariest moment of my life, but knowing how lucky I am is even scarier. I couldn't care less about how this will affect my race season, I'm just happy to still be apart of this world."

Former Women's WorldTour rider Emily Newsom (Ventum-BikeTiresDirect) won her debut outing at Homegrown, holding off a late charge by two-time defending champion Lauren De Crescenzo (The Feed-Argonaut-Castelli-Maxxis). Newsom's winning time was 5:34:10, De Crescenzo 30 seconds back in second and Sierra Sims in third, 8:04 back.

With fourth place in the elite men's 100-mile race, Gerlach secured the top spot in the men's collegiate division. Katie Prowell of Piedmont University was ninth overall for women across the long route and took honors as the women's collegiate champion.

Whitney Allison earns overall title at Transcordilleras

USA's Whitney Allison (Bike Sports) and Dutchman Michiel Van Vliet (Metec - SOLARWATT p/b Mantel) earned victories at the eight-day Transcordilleras stage race, which included 10,000km and more than 20,000 metres of elevation gain by crossing the three sections of the Andes Mountains in Colombia.

Allison finished in 42 hours, 6 minutes, 44 seconds, earning the victory in her third appearance, which included a 38th birthday celebration on Sunday after stage 8. Maddie Nutt (Q36.5 Off Road Racing) finished second overall and Natalia Franco (ENVE), who won 4 of the 8 stages, took third overall.

Van Vliet completed the eight stages in 34 hours, 57 minutes, 22 seconds, winning two stages and the overall. Cristian Ricardo Yepes Arroyave was second and Yelson Alejandro Rincon Alvarez took third, each rider on the podium separated by more than an hour.

Multi-time Transcordilleras competitors Thomas Dekker and Laurens Ten Dam did not finish this year's event. Ten Dam won the eight-stage overall in 2023 and the next year won the non-stop division.

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